by Joseph Nagle
“General, at first we thought that this might be the case. But it didn’t make sense. The Syrian agent was also killed in the attack and was a trusted asset. He has provided us, through his relationship with Dr. Sterling, with some of the most valuable intelligence relating to the movement of arms to Iran and attacks on Israel.”
“You mean martyred in the attack.” The comment was from the DHS, a man known for his sincere distaste of the violent side of Islam, of anything Islam. “The Syrian was Muslim right? You say he provided us with intelligence. Isn’t it plausible that the Iranians found out that there was a leak and ordered the attack through Hezbollah to kill two birds with one stone? Isn’t it conceivable the Muslim coerced the infidel to the site of the attack as a way to atone? You said that he practically begged for Dr. Sterling’s presence, right?”
The questions were infuriating; Ron knew that they would come. What really tried his patience; however, were the questions that emanated dangerously from an inherent bias. Islam was certainly a problem, not the religion, but the manner in which certain leaders used and manipulated the religion to control the populace and politics. Especially loathsome was the justification of certain barbarous acts in the name of Allah.
As leaders in the intelligence community, Ron felt that each one had the responsibility not to wear their hatred and biases on their sleeves, and, much worse, to allow that hatred to shape their thoughts, words, policies, and actions.
“Perhaps, sir, but I don’t believe that this is the case.”
“Not the case! How can you be so sure, how can you just write off the possibility?” This time the DHS’s voice raised a couple of decibels and octaves. “We have Hezbollah attacking a joint Israeli and US meeting, a meeting attended by a CIA officer. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization; they hate Americans almost as much as they hate Zionists. How can this not be the case?”
Ron turned once more to his boss seeking his approval to continue; Director Fundamen leaned back in his chair and offered a simple command, “Tell them, Ron.”
“The Syrian agent knew about the rogue leader of Hezbollah. He was providing us intelligence on that and warning us of the Assassination of the Ayatollah, he was warning Dr. Sterling.”
The DHS looked puzzled. Reaching back for the arm of his chair, he slowly lowered himself into his seat and waited for Ron to continue.
“The Syrian agent transferred documents to Dr. Sterling, the information contained a kill list. The Ayatollah’s name was on it as well as others. Dr. Sterling is on his way to the States as we speak. He will be debriefed and will be given orders to fly to Langley.”
Just as Ron was about to continue, the perimeters of the LCD panels flashed red. There was an incoming, urgent communication. The President’s personal secretary rushed into the room and whispered into the President’s ear. He digested her unheard words, and then looked up to the gaze of the rest of the room. “Ladies and Gentlemen, it would seem that we have a call from the President of Iran.”
He looked to his secretary who understood his silent command. Expertly, she attacked a keyboard with a series of strokes. The images that had been on display disappeared and in there place, the face of the Iranian President appeared covering all six panels; he seemed ominously larger than life.
“Hello, Mr. President, I wish your call had been under better circumstances. How can we help you?”
The Iranian President looked as if he wanted to jump through the screen, “Help me? What an odd question. You send one of your CIA officers into my country and kill our beloved Ayatollah, and then ask what else it is you can do for me?”
“Mr. Ahmad, we were just discussing the unfortunate loss of the Ayatollah. We certainly have our differences, but the US is not behind his assassination, and is not in the business of conducting assassinations; we are as concerned as you are.” The President had to lie, confirming CIA activities could have devastating consequences. “President Ahmad, the US was not conducting any operations in the Middle East, or, in particular, in your country. Just to be certain, I had ordered an accounting of the location of all US personnel in the region. There was no one within five-hundred miles of your borders.”
“Is that so?” The Iranian President lifted a silver object from his desk. It was a gun, the gun. “If it wasn’t your man, then please explain to me how it is that this gun was left in the home of the Ayatollah? This is the gun that killed him.”
Turning the gun over, a command in Farsi by the President to zoom in on the weapon was heard. The serial numbers of the gun could clearly be seen. “Do these numbers not belong to the man assigned this weapon? Are they not the identification numbers that the CIA uses when they issue a weapon to one of their officers, do they not belong to an officer named Dr. Michael Sterling?”
There was a collective gasp in the Situation Room.
“How could you possibly know that,” shouted the Director of Homeland Security (DHS). The President shot him an angry glare that told the DHS to shut up.
“Do not worry about how I know, and you do not need to answer my question, Mr. President; we both already know the answer. Mr. President, you have forty-eight hours to turn Dr. Sterling over to us. If you choose not to, the consequences will be devastating. Forty-eight hours, Mr. President, not one-minute more.”
The US President started to raise his voice in protest to the Iran’s nearly outright declaration of war, but it was too late, the communication ended. In its place was the seal of the United States.
The President turned to the silent room and commanded, “Everyone out! Dick, you stay.”
The room emptied quickly, only the President and the Director of the CIA remained.
Turning to the Director who was still seated, the President peered down at him and with an icy tone said, “Dick, I am going to ask you this only once; is there something I should know, was this your mission?”
“No, Mr. President, absolutely not; you know we don’t conduct assassinations.”
“Is it possible that Dr. Sterling was involved?”
“Mr. President, nothing is impossible.”
“Bring him in, Dick, and I mean now!”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Flight 369
SFO to DIA
Sitting in the back of the plane, Michael reminded himself, had its benefits both practical and psychological; boarding the tail end first always assured him of a place in the overhead bins to store his carry-on baggage and he felt safer.
It never ceased to create amusement, if not annoy him, when other passengers struggled to find a place for their baggage. They would place items in bins nowhere near their seat, or would shove jackets, stuffed animals, or some other tiny parcel into an overhead spot stealing prime plane real-estate from the rightful owners of the seat below that bin.
There was always at least one person that frantically canvassed every bin on the plane for a spot to put his obviously oversized and non-regulation carry-on bag; the obligatory flight attendant would be in tow pretending to assist in looking for an open place whilst uttering the cruelest of phrases, “We may have to check your bag, sir.”
In addition to the practical nature of an assured overhead bin, Michael, perhaps erroneously, believed that if the plane crashed, the tail section would afford a greater chance for survival to the passengers in its section. Michael had no refutable proof for such a statement other than the snapshots in USA Today or the scenes broadcast by CNN, or other news sources of plane crashes, which typically showed the tail of the plane intact while the rest of the fuselage was charred and strewn into pieces over miles of terrain.
One would think that a former Airborne Ranger turned CIA Officer who had just been extracted from a terrorist attack by a Blackhawk, catapulted off the deck of a secret carrier in an even more secret plane flying 9178 miles at mach-fifteen, and then strapped into an F/A-18F Super Hornet for a brain numbing “quick trip” would have little concern with flying. This could
n’t be further from the truth.
Michael couldn’t pinpoint from where his fear derived, he just hated flying. More so, the flying was tolerable, but it was the take-off and the landing that raised his heart-rate and whitened his knuckles.
There was a time when every flight Michael was on - over a span of fifty-two flights – that, instead of landing with the plane, ended with him jumping out of it and descending under the canopy of a T-10C, MC1-1B, or Ram Air Chute to the ground below. But that was a long time ago.
The difference between being under the mushroom of a parachute and waiting for rubber to meet tarmac was that a chute opened instantly; thus, any fear one had was relatively short-lived. Besides, he always packed his own chutes, but never flew the plane, and Michael trusted only himself.
Unable to give up his need for control of all situations, Michael had a problem knowing that his life was solely in the hands of some unseen person locked behind a little door pulling levers, pushing buttons, and staring at colorful blinking lights in some Wizard of Oz fashion.
Humans are prone to error: they come to work tired, hung-over, pissed-off, and depressed. In the hands of a pilot having a really bad day, passengers are subjected to his ability or inability to focus on doing the right thing.
The cockpit is the pilot’s office. Statistically, one of these pilots is certain to have had just a bit too much Jack Daniels the night before, or had just walked in on his wife with the co-pilot or some other guy between her legs. And, with near one-hundred percent probability, at least one pilot each year is going to die from a heart attack in the cockpit mid-flight because his answer to calorie counting was eating two donuts a day instead of three.
This was a bit much maybe, even borderline neurotic, but still plausible. Humans are simply fallible. Michael didn’t trust them, but was smart enough and conscious enough of his own compulsions to be aware that the notion that some perceptible shred of safety offered by sitting in the back of the plane was really just that, a compulsion. Nonetheless, it offered a modicum of psychological comfort; albeit slight.
Unfortunately, sitting in back always meant being served food and drink somewhere near last; right now, Michael needed a drink.
Perhaps, it was due to the now worn off adrenaline that had fiercely scorched his veins only four hours ago, and now having worn off, or that his temporary blindness from hypoxia was gone, that the need to imbibe was doubly important. His hands only just stopped shaking. Looking at them, Michael could see remnants of dried blood still under his finger nails. There weren’t proper facilities on the Shadow; actually, there weren’t any facilities on the Shadow; he should have washed them back at Travis but didn’t.
The implication of this was that he would need to get up and go to the restroom to clean them. Becoming self-conscious of his bloody fingernails, he crossed his arms and waited; the drink seemed more important.
Sitting in the cramped seats of coach was a risk; the person next to you may be of a larger persuasion, too talkative, or even worse, it could be somebody’s young and obnoxious toddler.
It would be difficult to be an advocate for giving a child on a plane some drug to make them drowsy, or to lace the child’s juice with a bit of bourbon. This had been tried before and with litigious results; the guilty party being led away in cuffs and becoming sudden internet fodder. Assuredly, every passenger on that plane understood why it had been done in the first place, and, more assuredly, had some empathy for the guilty party.
The obvious answer to most of these problematic potential situations was a seat in first class. Even though he could afford it, the Company preferred that he not fly in the first class cabin. Michael’s salary was modest, but the additional incentive pay for language, hazardous duty, and bonuses for previous work left him reasonably comfortable.
In addition, being married to a doctor had its financial advantages, too. The Company pays all expenses for these trips and Michael had offered to cover the difference in cost between coach and first class, where leg room was certain to be ample and that, ever-so-necessary, drink would already have touched his lips; however, they had told him no. Michael never understood the bureaucracy of government, sure that his leadership always enjoyed first-class.
The effects of vodka over ice, not only calmed him, but seemed always to help him memorize the cover story he would soon have to recite to his wife. At least, that’s what he told himself: alcohol equals confidence.
The rational for the cramped coach seat was that taxpayers should not be made to foot unnecessarily the bill for certain luxuries and that government employees should not receive extra frills. Such a mentality is pervasive throughout government service, first experienced by Michael while assigned as an Interrogator to the 82nd Airborne Division, 313th Military Intelligence Battalion, Long Range Surveillance Detachment (LRSD) – Ranger.
“Never take what you wouldn’t, first, provide to your troops.” Unsolicited but well understood advice given to him by his company commander when Michael had been promoted to Sergeant. If other intelligence officers had to travel in cattle class then he would also have to travel like a cow.
Moo, Michael thought.
The flight from San Francisco to Denver, although typically an easy two hours, never had a calming effect on Michael; he just simply hated to fly, especially when it was on the way home. This was the worst part.
At least after this flight he would be at home; soon he would be with Sonia.
These commercial flights were always after a mission overseas; some trips were under “official cover” while others required “non-official cover.” It was the latter that Michael particularly hated; should a mission go wrong, the Company, or “The Agency” depending on the circles you traveled in, would not avow any knowledge of his existence.
How would that be explained to his wife should he suddenly be dead?
Perhaps “they” would tell her that he died in a head on collision when, in fact, he had perished from a hastily placed Improvised Explosive Device hidden in his hotel room. Or, that he had walked in on a robbery at some convenience store; that would explain the bullet holes in his corpse.
It was on these flights home that Michael incessantly rehearsed the story that he would tell everyone he knew. It was never easy lying, but after years of practice it came easier to him. Telling lies to his friends, his father, even his mother, with whom he often spoke, was not tremendously difficult. But regurgitating some massive fabrication to his wife was ever the challenge; he felt that she always saw through his mendacious script. They told him that it was for their protection.
This was the woman, his wife, that looked at him with such purity and devotion that it actually pained Michael to launch on a diatribe about how some consultant in San Francisco was causing the current IT project to be behind schedule and over budget. That it had been critical for Michael to fly at the last minute to San Francisco for three-days, maybe more, depending on how the “project” was going.
Michael had met Sonia while both were in graduate school at Georgetown; she had been in medical school and he had been nearly finished with his doctorate in Middle Eastern Studies (although she thought he was getting his MBA). The attraction between the two was immediate and reciprocated. Michael had just ended a relationship with a woman who, externally appeared perfect, but internally was wrong in every way one could imagine.
Michael was in no hurry to start anew; Sonia neither. She had spent the last four years with a man that was not yet aware of the forthcoming revelation that his content relationship to Sonia was about to end.
It was their chance encounter - precipitated by their own respective relationship pains - at a piano bar that revealed new plans for the two of them.
After spending an evening drunk in each others words, the instant connection between them was obvious; from that moment forward not one day would go by without a word between the two in some manner.
In the beginning, it was deliberately slow. Each understood what they h
ad, how they felt, but were convinced that it couldn’t be true.
Not willing to travel the same path that leads to usual despair between every star-crossed love, Michael and Sonia approached their growing braided love in a tantric manner much the way a man climbs Everest: slowly, carefully, and with a forcibly controlled anticipation and immaculate expectation, but expecting a storm induced sudden fatal avalanche.
They made it to the top.
Before the Flight Attendant with the drink cart could arrive and Michael could begin his rehearsal, the man sitting in the middle seat “had” to use the restroom, Murphy’s Law he supposed.
Tapping on Michael’s shoulder, the man said, “Sorry, fella, gotta use the can. Do you mind?”
“No, no, of course not,” but Michael really did mind, this was one trip where he didn’t want to get out of his seat.
With deliberate and intentional movements, Michael shifted in his seat to make standing up much easier. Pushing himself up with his strong upper body, Michael pulled his one good leg under him as best that he could to stand; unfortunately, cattle-class is not conducive for these types of precise movements, even for the physically gifted. Before he fell, Michael knew it was going to happen. He attempted to put all of his weight from his good side to the already stiffened bad side, a necessary movement given the contortion required to stand on a full plane. The sharp pain that had seemed to be content to reside in his hip while sitting unexpectedly tore through his torn muscles and down the side of his thigh.
The wounds opened where the flesh had been temporarily fused by the butterfly stitches and the super glue that had been hastily applied by the Vice Admiral’s personal doctor.
(The doctor had asked no questions, Michael had offered no explanation.)
The flash of new pain ran white-hot throughout his nervous system. Impervious to any need to retain his dignity, Michael lost his short fight with gravity. Without any ability to stop the inevitable, Michael fell into the man sitting across the aisle from him.